Elif: Of Love and Money

Elif

March 12, 2:30 pm, Rome, Italy

A taxi dropped her off at the airport rather early. It was flipping cold outside, right through the middle of a winter that should have ended a long time ago. The driver helped her get her suitcase out of the trunk and saw her to the entrance gate. She thanked him in perfect Italian, warped under a thin veil of Turkish accent.

She'd been living in Rome for nearly a decade, and still, she couldn't bring herself to get rid of it. Old habits die hard.

She proceeded steadily towards passport control, checked in her only suitcase and then directed herself through customs with a sour look on her face. She loved traveling but deplored the whole nonsense of airport security. She found the whole nuisance rather idiotic.

Although her plane arrived shortly after, her flight got delayed for at least an extra hour. They had some technical difficulties. Needless to say, she wasn't in the least happy. Why did such things always had to happen to her? What crime had she committed in another life for her to deserve this?

In the face of society, she was a poster child, a model citizen. She conducted herself with elegance, respected all laws, drank moderately and only in special occasions, stayed hydrated and ate as healthy as possible, exercised often, was never late to work, and was an all-around good girl. Besides the fact that she cursed like a sailor, albeit only in extreme circumstances, she conducted herself like a five-year-old.

She was always the smart one of the three. Or at the very least, the Switzerland of the Denizer household.

Asli, the eldest, tended to go a little out of her way to get attention. Later on, they would find out she suffered from bipolar disorder due to a chemical imbalance in the brain. She would need to be medicated for as long as she could breathe; verbatim words from her psychiatrist. Nevertheless, she could still have a normal life if she kept on taking the antipsychotics, and she could be ambitious and goal-oriented if she only wished to be. She was astute as a fox, strong-charactered, and a bit of an all-around badass; reasons by which she both admired and envied her.

Nazlı, on the contrary, was irresponsible. It was expected; she was the youngest one after all. She was an art student who did whatever she wanted, when she wanted, and how she wanted. She was in her early twenties, beautiful and naive. She read graphic novels as opposed to full-fledged books and watched far too many movies. She came home late, sometimes during the wee hours of the morning, but in spite of it all, she loved her, no matter what.

Elif was stuck in the middle. She wasn't as imbalanced as her oldest sister nor as immature as her youngest. She was the one everyone could trust, because according to them "Come on, it's Elif." She never got home drunk nor late, never attempted to commit suicide, never failed a single class in school, never had a boyfriend until she turned twenty, and never really did have many friends who could get her into trouble. She was picky, to say the least, and her social circle showed it. Her parents never really met another friend other than Aynur, a girl from Ankara she'd been friends with ever since kindergarten.

Today she'd be returning home for the first time in two years. She'd missed her family and her friends, but unfortunately, her job in Rome had taken over most of her life. She owned a store. It was essentially half atelier, half boutique. She was a designer, and shortly after graduation, she'd moved to Rome with a little help from her influential father. By then, she'd traveled halfway across the world, and unlike Nazlı, she could truly appreciate how fortunate they were and had clear that not everybody could afford these trips like they did, so she would learn to make the most of each one.

Today was her birthday. She was turning thirty-one years old and she wanted to be with her family when the clock struck twelve and she was officially a year older. She wanted to celebrate next to family and friends and revel on the immense feeling of gratitude that she'd come to forget in the past two years. She wanted to remember the good times and put away the bad times; at least for tonight.

March 12, 9:00 pm, Istanbul, Turkey

It was dark by the time her plane landed. She wandered quickly toward the exit and into the airport, her Turkish passport handy along with her Italian one. She passed through passport control and customs, then proceeded towards baggage claim.

The airport was noisy and packed full of travelers coming and going. A man spoke on the phone as he rolled a suitcase behind him, an old couple argued about some nonsense nearby, and a baby woke up crying somewhere in the distance. The smell of fresh paint mixed with disinfectant made her dizzy, the bright lights blinded her, and she was overwhelmed by the mixture of colors and sounds surrounding her.

Somehow she made it to the exit without fainting, looking like a child who's just lost her mother at a supermarket. Just then she devised Aynur, waving at her in the distance. She let out a breath and walked toward her, suitcase in tow.

They hugged like they hadn't seen each other in ages; which was true since they saw each other two years ago when Elif came to Istanbul for her sister's wedding.

"Is it just me, or have you gotten shorter?"

"Huh, and here I thought I would've grown an extra inch or two in the last year.." Aynur laughed, her voice ever so melodious.

"And what the hell happened to your hair?!"

"What? This?" she continued the banter as she picked up a tuft of hair, "Not even all the hairspray in the universe," she now cupped her face. "Let me repeat that, in the universe, can tame this mane." Her eyes narrowed seriously, although, there was a sparkle of childhood mischief and a slight twitch of her lips.

"Right..." Aynur drawled. "Poor thing, she's lost her head too." Elif burst into laughter then, embracing her childhood friend as they walked out toward the parking lot.